Category Archives: House/Lifestyle

Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

2019 in 2019 – small victories

Remember when I said I was going to try and write updates often on my journey to ridding our home of 2019 items this year? Yeah, that never actually works out. I was making really great progress, and then I was rear-ended while driving to work at the end of February and was diagnosed with whiplash and damage to my rotator cuff – making it difficult to lift anything/try on clothes, etc. Then, once I was feeling better (thanks to weekly physiotherapy and massage therapy appointments!), work began to pick up. I only had three days off in the entire month of June (and two of them were the 29th and 30th) – so working seven days a week doesn’t leave much time for decluttering!

The July 1st long weekend was my first multi-day weekend since April so I took advantage of that and tried to make a sizeable dent on my chart of 2019 items. We have been keeping track all year as items leave our house, but we are quite far behind where we should be. In order to hit the goal of 2019 items, it averages out to 5.53 items per day. Today, July 6th is the 187th day so we should be at 1034 items by now – which is not even close…

Anyways, I once again went back to this organizer. I use it for makeup – despite almost never wearing makeup…

The mission was that top purple drawer – which was stuffed to the point of overflowing with lipstick…

I opened each one, and if it looked wrong or smelled off, it was an immediate no – some of them had visible mold, so disgusting! I even found this one that looked fine, but based on that date I did not want to keep it! Lipstick usually has a shelf life of 6-12 months…so 27 years felt like it might have been a bit of a stretch….

By the time I was finished, I had 63 items to go into the trash. 63! Who even needs to own that many lipsticks?!

I know there’s items in my keep pile that will end up in the garbage before this year is over once I try them out, but for now, this is what that drawer now looks like:

The little perfume samples were sitting on top of the bathroom counter, so it’s nice to have a spot to stick those!

I also owned this cute little lipstick organizer, so I figured I should actually use it! It makes it so easy to find exactly what you’re looking for!

So again, this doesn’t make a huge, noticeable difference in the house, but it’s nice to have more space for other things in this organizer.

Total items gone: 590

Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

2019 Items in 2019

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Last weekend, I decided to start tackling our disaster of a basement…

I started breaking down old boxes, and tossing away anything that was old/broken/etc. It did take me a few hours, but by the time I finished just this side of the basement I had thrown away over 100 items and I swept/mopped the floors. There’s still a lot to be done, but overall I was very happy with the progress made in one day!

As of today (January 26) there are over 200 items out of our house since the beginning of the year!

Count: 236/2019

After this picture was taken, the lamps and stool were both moved and that cardboard box was broken down and placed into recycling.


This is entirely Christmas/Halloween/Easter decorations….. I might have a bit too much of that stuff…


I almost never wear heels, so I will probably end up selling quite a few of those pairs at some point this year. I did move a few pairs straight into a tote of things to sell, but I was more focused on picking them up off the floor than I was on going through them…
Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

2019 Items in 2019

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m on a quest to rid our house of at least 2019 items during this year. That equals about 5.5 items leaving every single day – which is a tough task!

I knew there would be lots of days where I didn’t mark off anything from my chart, but other days with huge progress. I decided to start in the master bathroom, this storage shelf in particular:

(And yes, that tin actually has Quality Street in it…this is right beside my bathtub, and everyone needs snacks while they soak in the tub haha).

The first thing I decided to focus on was that tiny little plastic container on the bottom. In case you can’t tell from the picture, it’s filled with lip glosses/balms. Seriously. How many of those does a person actually need?!

I started smelling them all, and anything that didn’t seem right, or I knew was old went. In the end, I threw out 32 items that day:

Did these 32 items make a noticeable difference in my decluttering efforts to make our house look better? Of course not. But it only took a few minutes and I was able to mark off a full row on my decluttering sheet – it was quick, easy and has motivated me to keep going!

As of today (January 11th), there are 82 items gone from our house! It’s still all small items, but it’s progress! Here’s to keeping it going!

Progress: 82/2019

Decluttering, House/Lifestyle

Minimalistic-ish?

Ah yes, January – the start of a new year, and all those stupid “new year, new me” posts on social media. The time of year when everyone is making resolutions about how to make themselves better – how often they’re going to take selfies of themselves at the gym (I’m fairly certain that’s about 75% of all people do there), what delicious foods they are going to eliminate from their lives – and it’s also the time of year when fast food locations put out great deals to entice everyone to break their new diet haha.

There’s zero point in me making a resolution to go to the gym more (not going to happen), or to eat healthier (you should see the stash of snacks I have in my makeup cabinet beside my bathtub….) – but I have decided that 2019 is the year I finally finish unpacking all the boxes from our move into our house (which, you know, happened back in 2015…) – and in the process, de-clutter all the unnecessary items laying around. I found a great website – Nourishing Minimalism  who has a great challenge to get rid of 2019 items from your home during 2019. I definitely do not see myself becoming a true minimalist, but it would be nice to not trip over things all the time, and live a slightly more simple life.

So, I signed up, and printed off my free chart. I also printed a second chart, and marked “Incoming” on the top of it. I figure it won’t make much of a difference if I do manage to rid my home of 2019 items, only to replace it with that many new things. So my goal is to come as close as possible to filling the outgoing chart, while keeping the incoming chart at a reasonable number – I haven’t decided on a hard number yet, but I’m sure I’ll figure that out as the year goes on. The only rules – food doesn’t count, and neither do prescriptions. However, I am counting items such as hand soap, shampoo, etc since we have an obscene amount stockpiled in our basement – my hope is to actually make a dent in our reserves…

I guess we’ll see how I actually make out on this challenge, but I am going to try and post regularly to keep myself focused.